A compilation of The Good Mans thoughts: Time

[Daminc]

I haven't got the best grasp of wave mechanics, so it took me a while to understand what you're explaining. I think you've got something worth putting some real world numbers behind.

I haven't got any grasp of wave mechanics. The first time I've heard of 'Tensors' was in this thread. The only thing I working on is an image in my head combined with what little I do know about physics but I'm glad you like it.

I wouldn't know where to start at applying 'real world numbers' to the theory.

I love to theorise. It gives me a buzz when some scientists in TV says 'Hey, we just thought of an another idea' and it's one that I've already thought of.

For example, it was back in 1988 (on the graveyard shift whilst in the Army) that I put together a vaild reason why the Universe would be accelerating its expansion as apposed to the idea of either constantly drifting apart or evolving into a 'big crunch'. The idea boiled down to the area outside the expanding Universe acting like an energy vacuum drawing the Universe towards it, combined with the initial energy from the 'big bang' and the lesser concentration of energy within the Universe would cause it to accelerate. (btw this 'energy vacuum' might account for what some people label 'dark energy').

I heard the theory on TV about 5 years later (someting to do with measuring light from a distant quasar, I think) that stated the Universe accelerating it's expansion. At this point I tried to think of ways that it was wrong (which led me to the density of space/time affecting light etc)

...but I have no idea how to do the math to 'prove' anything. By the time I learn enough math to even start it will probably done by someone else anyway.

I was under the impression that tensors describe the curvature and stretchability of a space, and the only way they can define it is to view a space from a vantage point outside that space, not simply just from far away within that space.

Mmmm, I don't know about this. I can imagine a elasticated cube being distorted from the outside as well as from the inside so I'm not sure what this means.

So I've always though that to describe the curvature of space-time as we know it (we're 4D creatures), it would have to need a higher "spacial" dimension to be curved within.

I've heard a little bit about this a long while ago but I didn't understand it then either (Although, there is some references in multiple religion text of higher & lower planes existencing).

 

[Jonny_trigonometry]

"Mmmm, I don't know about this. I can imagine a elasticated cube being distorted from the outside as well as from the inside so I'm not sure what this means."

If you're within a curved space, you will not be able to know how it is curved because you are also curved in this space.

 

[Daminc]

I might need a bit more clarification here.

Do you mean: The ground on Earth looks flat to the observer and you have to step away from the Earth to see the curvature?

I would of thought that we would not have to 'see' to apply the principles. We would only have to apply the physics and see if they conform to observational evidence.

Oh yes, I can across briefly something I haven't heard of that might be involved in this idea and that is (Aether: Quantum Vacuum). Any idea what this is about?

 

[Tournesol]

If you're within a curved space, you will not be able to know how it is curved because you are also curved in this space.

We are within a curved space and we can tell because of gravity

 

[Daminc]

We are within a curved space and we can tell because of gravity

Assuming Einstein's right of course :) ...who am I to argue?

Have you an thoughts on what we've been talking about recently? Do you know anything about (Aether: Quantum Vacuum)?

 

[Tournesol]

Those are very confusing subjects.

 

[Daminc]

Those are very confusing subjects.

Tell me about it

I'm confused most of my waking life

 

[Tournesol]

Try this
http://www.astro.ucla.edu/~wright/cosmology_faq.html

 

[Tournesol]

BTW, you have to be carfule researching this kind of stuff on the web. Most of the information is highly technical or crankish ("free energy")

 

[Daminc]

BTW, you have to be carfule researching this kind of stuff on the web. Most of the information is highly technical or crankish ("free energy")

I have noticed that many times on my travels. That's why most of the stuff I do in my head and 'damn the statistics'. It's also why I like to talk to real people about it because they can explain things easier than a book.

I've just gone thought that link you gave me and I'll raise you to two links:

http://aca.mq.edu.au/PaulDavies/publications/papers/Quantum_vacuum.pdf
http://philsci-archive.pitt.edu/archive/00001196/03/1.htm

I find when using Google to look for scientific information on the Web it often helps to narrow things down be going into the advanced search feature and making sure you limit the results to an '.edu' domain.

 

[Jonny_trigonometry]

You can call it an aether, a quantum vacuum, or simply space-time. It's the thing that we exist within, and if it were to be curved, crumpled, squashed, twisted or whatever, everything within it would also.

If you look at the stars, you think that you are looking in a straight line, because the photons that reach your eye come from these distant objects seemingly in a direct line of sight. space-time could be "bent" (in higher dimensional space) in between you and the star, and the photons would travel through this bent region and also bend with it, because they are bounded within space-time, and it still looks like you are looking straight forward, but if you could view this scenario from "higher dimensional space" (the space that space-time exists within) you would see that the space in between you and the star is not linear. To you, within space-time, your line of sight appears linear. So you can't know how space-time is bent unless you can see it from the outside.

In GR, mass is the bridge between the curvature of space-time (within higher dimensional space) and us (within space-time). Einstein stated that a curvature of space-time produces a force within space-time, and the curvature is caused by mass. So this gives rise to gravitational effects. The scenerio I was explaining above is sort of like this, but I wasn't thinking of curvature as producing a force that we could feel. If curvature of space didnt' produce any forces within space, then it could be distorted in any way shape or form without us being able to detect. it could loop around and fold and twist in all sorts of ways between you and your computer screen and you wouldn't be able to tell. The main thing that GR does is assume that the curvature of space produces a force within space.

a 2D piece of paper can't be folded in 2D, it must need another dimension to be able to be folded. a crumpled up piece of paper can only exist in 3D. think of space invaders the video game, all the characters and environment in that game are in a 2D universe, so if you could fold their world (which exists in a 2D plane) they would also be folded, and to them, things are no different because the photons they use to see each other follow the folded path also, so everything still looks the same to them. If you crumpled it up, everything would still look the same to them. They wouldn't be aware that their entire universe was crumpled up in a higher dimensional space.